Authors 'Round the South

In which unimportant questions are posed regarding Harper Lee, a man attempts to make Ms. Eudora Welty’s potato salad with store bought mayonnaise, Mr. David Barry discusses The Brothers Karamazov with a straight face, Ms. Nancy Pate remembers that the original Barbie was slightly “top heavy,” a bookseller contemplates the uses of voodoo, while another bookseller accidentally frightens a customer with the sound of a typewriter, and a lady takes a walk in the evening to post a letter.

Arts Calendar | STARS |Gossip |Okra | The Blogs | Read This! | Found in Lady Banks' Commonplace Book | On her ladyship's bookshelf

Dearest Readers,

This summer marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird—a novel that her ladyship, the editor still believes to be the most significant book ever to be published in this country.  It is a book that resides at top of her “top ten list”—regardless of what list one is contemplating. Greatest Southern Novels? It is there. Books that every person should read at least once? It holds the place of honor. Most memorable characters? Her ladyship had moments, as a young girl, of intense disappointment that she could not grow up to be Atticus Finch. If someone were to inquire of her ladyship’s top ten books on the art of making casseroles, she is not entirely certain she would not find a way to include To Kill a Mockingbird somewhere in the list.

In celebration of the novel’s 1960 publication by J. Lippincott, bookstores and libraries across the country are hosting events, readings, re-enactments, concerts, and movie screenings.

But not author appearances, since as The Smithsonian Magazine notes:

To spend an hour in Monroeville, Alabama, is to know why Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, ranks as one of the crankiest writers on the planet. Strongly inclined to put aside the hype and hoopla and let literature speak for itself, Lee, the best-known native of the town (pop. 6,372) that served as the model for her novel’s Maycomb, has found herself living a short drive from one restaurant called the Mockingbird Grill and another named Radley’s Fountain, after Boo Radley, the character in Mockingbird who might be voted Least Likely to Become a Restaurateur.

The anniversary has naturally prompted a resurgence of critical discussions about the book, such as the all-important issue of “Who would you have play Atticus Finch in a movie remake?” (Her ladyship’s first choice would not be Mr. Tom Hanks.)

And, it will no doubt spawn a thousand earnest Youtube videos and cause the waiting list for Gregory Peck DVD rentals to extend outwards toward the Christmas holidays.

Her ladyship admits, it is difficult to censor such enthusiasm, however artificially engendered. Nevertheless, she feels that the most fitting honor one can do a book is to read it. She urges everyone to so honor To Kill a Mockingbird. Even if you have read it a dozen times already, it will still be time well spent.

Her ladyship, the editor

Authors 'Round the South

Authors Round the South is the home of one of the most extensive listings of literary events in the South, including author readings & appearances, book club meetings, book & literary festivals, open mics, poetry slams and writing groups. No matter what part of the South you live in, you can find a bookstore and author appearance near you!

Ten years of great southern lit for $9.95!

How well do you know your Southern lit? We dare you to use a pen on these crossword puzzles, each inspired by one of the winning titles of the SIBA Book Award, honoring ten years of the very best in Southern literature as chosen by the people who would know...Southern Independent Booksellers! A great gift for your book club, for puzzle-lovers, and anyone who loves Southern literature.

$9.95 paperback. Available at Southern Indie Bookstores.

Play a sample puzzle online!

Reader, meet writer: STARS authors on the road

The following authors are traveling this month and open to meeting with book clubs, talking to schools and participating in library programs. Visit the STARS directory at Authors Round the South for more information.

Literary Gossip & News

The University of California Press will be releasing the first volume of Mark Twain’s “tell–all” autobiography this November. Can the movie version be far behind?

Neil White’s In the Sanctuary of Outcasts (a SIBA Book Award finalist) is reviewed by the Southern Literary Review. (They like it).

Southern Methodist University (SMU) Press may be closing its doors. Editors have called for a letter campaign to convince the University administration to reconsider.

Mrs. Henrietta Lacks finally receives a graveside marker.

A look at Belmont Abbey’s “trial by fire”

A Yankee writer tries to make Miss Eudora Welty’s potato salad (with store-bought mayonnaise, since, as everyone knows, homemade mayonnaise requires three hands)

And speaking of Eudora Welty, some of her photographs may be viewed at the new Southern photography exhibit at the Knoxville Museum of Art.

On the many good qualities of a seersucker suit.

On traveling with George Garrett (“Why, his Fred Chappell stories alone could fill a thousand miles of highway.”)

The Pulpwood Queen has announced her Book and Author Summer Concert Series (is it only coincidence that the featured authors are all so hunky?)

Because the most important thing in any bookstore is the store cat

Mr. David Barry expects us to seriously believe that the one book that changed his life was The Brothers Karamazov: " I was supposed to read it my freshman year in college, but it's 18 million pages long and I could never get past the first 43. Nevertheless I wrote a paper about it, and I got an OK grade, which taught me that I could write convincingly about things I did not remotely understand. This paved the way for my career in journalism."

Oh, well, that makes sense then.

Lady Banks’ Commonplace Book

I have just walked around the corner to post a letter to my sister Ann. Do you always find a special charm in posting letters? A sudden feeling of communication with the person you have written to, as you drop it in the box . . . Much more than in writing it. When you write a letter you are thinking more of yourself than of the person you are writing to. Sometimes I think up letters to write, just for the fun of walking with Michael [her pet spaniel] to the station to post them. And I have never been able to figure out why it is no fun to walk to the station without a letter to post. And I always prefer to post letters at night. But then everything is heightened after dark.

–Elizabeth Lawrence to Ann Preston Bridgers, July 22, 1934

From Becoming Elizabeth Lawrence: Discovered Letters of a Southern Gardener edited by Emily Herring Wilson (John F. Blair, 2010)

From the Blogs

{The Authors}

Mindy Friddle: The best opening lines of  a novel or short story do many things at once: a first line may intrigue you, create tension or hint at a conflict, say something about a character. A first line is beautiful or lyrical or witty--always memorable. Here are a few of my favorites

Nancy Pate: Johnson and I are roughly the same age, of that generation whose first Barbies were the first Barbies — the pony-tailed, top-heavy, long-legged models who came with a strapless black-and-white striped bathing suit, but who had all sorts of glamorous outfits you could buy…
read more

A Good Blog is Hard to Find: We wanted to emulate her. Not just the passionate, committed way she approached theatre, but the way she lived. She had such gentleness with all little living things. Her yard was RIFE with five inch long waspy-waisted banana spiders, huge vile beasticles that I would have smashed with hammers while screaming, while Yo found them to be beautiful and useful. I so admired the non-judgmental, accepting way she loved any broken, ridiculous human who came into her orbit for exactly who and how and where they were, not for their potential or for what she wanted from them… read more.

Janis Owens: I was complaining about how much I’d eaten, and she said, “Oh, baby, I think everybody worries too much about weight these days. It’s a waste of time. Your Grannie stayed on a diet her whole life, and it never made a bit of difference. When she died, she filled that coffin up.” http://www.janisowens.com/?p=775

The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature:  Barb was the life of the pair. Her voice was high-pitched and a little gravely from age, something like Edith Bunker, though much less annoying and much more endearing. There was no hesitation when she spoke. “I want a red one. I don’t know about engines and all that stuff. I want a red car.” She sat perfectly, legs crossed, sequined hat atop her head, her pale green skirt suit pressed but showing a small stain, and her golden cross dangling around her neck. She seemed to want to ignore the fact that Bill was on the slow downward spiral that cancer patients take. She loved Bill, and didn’t want to be without him.. . read more

Fried Chicken and Coffee: One of the reasons I like [Charles Dodd} White and his work (see Night Train issue 9.1 for an advance look at his forthcoming novel) is that we mesh fairly tightly on aesthetics. Read what he has to say in this interview with Dog Eat Crow World, which I could have written, pretty much, as reasons why I founded this blogazine.. .read more

Gunpowder Cowboy Boots and Mascara: Marla Jones and me, we went off to see The Marshall Tucker Band.  It was 1978, I think, and most of my friends were listening to the music of the Doobie Brothers and arguing whether Michael McDonald had saved or ruined them. I was buying vinyl copies of Where We All Belong and firin' up the Pioneer turntable and killer speakers I bought with money from selling livestock at the county 4-H Fair... read more

{The Booksellers}

A Cappella: George "Machine Gun" Kelly is a name from the heyday of the American gangster era as familiar as "Baby Face" Nelson, Bonnie & Clyde, "Ma" Barker and many other colorful outlaws, but the details of his life and crimes are far less well-known. Mississippi author Ace Atkins, who has carved out a distinctive niche for himself with a number of historical crime novels, decided it was time to change that fact. Thus, Kelly's exploits are the subject of Atkins latest: Infamous. read more

A Reading Life:  I sometimes think that books come to us when we are ready for them. I knew about Elizabeth Lawrence, of course. The longtime garden columnist for the Charlotte Observer, Lawrence is often considered the quintessential, classic southern garden writer. Her book A Southern Garden was first published in 1942 and has never been out of print. It is considered de rigueur for the gardener’s bookshelf if one lives below the Mason-Dixon Line. There are some nine different collections of her articles and essays available now, and over fifty articles published in various magazines and journals. In 2004 Horticulture magazine named her one of America’s Twenty Greatest gardeners. In my days as a bookseller I would hand Elizabeth Lawrence to anyone new to the area who wanted to know about southern gardening. But I had never read her myself, because—I’m sorry to say—I thought she only wrote about flowers, and I was only interested in “useful” gardens. read more

Blue Bicycle Books: There are a lot of wonderful foodie books about this food-crazed part of the world, but this one is so fun, so all-encompassing, ranging from recipes to history to the current restaurant scene. It’s a wonderful stew just like the picture of the Lowcountry Boil on the cover. Dabney’s book celebrates the “foods, history and romance down from England, Africa, The Caribbean, France, Germany and Scotland.” It’s a tall order, but Dabney, a James Beard award-winner for cookbook of the year, is up to the challenge. Foreword by the Lee Bros.” read more

Bound to be read: Did you know that Voodoo dolls are actually used for healing? Ever wonder what ingredients are inside a gris-gris bag—or even what one is? Find these answers and more in this introduction to Voodoo. Learn about the mysterious religion’s history, meet Voodoo’s pantheon of spirits, and witness a Voodoo ritual within a dark courtyard in the New Orleans French Quarter. You’ll also find spells and rituals for love, money, luck, protection, and more, as well as instructions for crafting your own voodoo dolls and gris-gris bags. read more

Burry Bookstore:  To most people, Folly Beach is simply the last barrier island before reaching the great Atlantic. To some, it's a sanctuary for lost souls, which is why Emmy Hamilton's mother encourages her to buy the local book store, Folly's Finds, hoping it will distract Emmy from the loss of her husband. Emmy is at first resistant. So much has already changed. But after finding love letters and an image of a beautiful bottle tree in a box of used books from Folly's Finds, she decides to take the plunge. But the seller insists on one condition: Emmy must allow Lulu, the late owner's difficult sister, to continue selling her bottle trees from its back yard. read more

Consuming Books: The subtitle of Mr. Shivers is ‘nobody can cheat death,’ and that certainly is true in this book.  In his debut novel, Robert Jackson Bennett presents to the reader, as one reviewer calls it,”a hobo-laden horror fantasy set in the Great Depression, concerning a hunt for a serial killer.”Bennett pays homage to Stephen King (The Dark Tower) and Cormac McCarthy (The Road) by putting the main character, Connelly, on the road to a version of hell.  Connelly is following Mr. Shivers, or as he is called by others, The Harvester, to kill him in revenge for the death of Connelly’s daughter.  On his way, he meets others who have been hurt by Shivers.  He and his companions jump on and off trains, meet groups of folks on the move to anywhere better, and view the landscape as a harsh metaphor of their lives as they make their way to the final confrontation with Satan.

Pomegranate Books: I've had a fascination with catastrophe fiction lately.  I touched this briefly in one of my early blogs on our old Blogspot blog in a post called "Books as Train Wrecks." That post covered a wide variety of train-wrecky things, from imperialism and pandemic flu to destruction of the envrionment.  Today, I'd like to focus on my current obsession: disaster books.  Not just any kind of disaster, though.  The disaster of what we're doing to ourselves, our planet and our future.  Wow. This is awesomely uplifting, right?  I'm not sure why, all of a sudden, I've been devouring these books.  They have a touch of the macabre.  They make me not want to have children.  But, in some ways, they make feel better. They help me imagine what things might happen.  They help me enjoy the here and now.  They make me think.  And they're wholly addictive.read more

Regulator:  Paul Guest is a prize-winning poet who lives in Atlanta. He grew up as a gifted, smart, but “normal” kid—until his 6th grade graduation party. That day, a ride on a bicycle with failing brakes left him with a broken neck, a bruised spinal cord, and paralysis from his neck down. In One More Theory About Happiness, Paul Guest tells his story, from the day of his accident to the present. I started reading this book two days ago, and couldn’t put it down. I was even reading it here at the store yesterday, and I never read while I’m at work. This is not a feel good book, but it’s certainly not a feel bad book either. In spare and beautiful prose Paul Guest just tells his tale straight on, leaving us with a deeper understanding of what it means to be alive.  read more

Page 854:  Last week a customer leaned her head into the back room and said facetiously, "What's that strange noise? I could hear it all the way at the front of the store." She was referring to the sound of me pecking away on our loyal store typewriter. Yes, we still have -- and still use -- one of those antique instruments which have almost vanished from the scene thanks to the ubiquity of computers.

Skye Ferrante would probably appreciate that. The New York-based writer still uses a 1929 Royal typewriter to produce his children's books. Problem is, that productive clacking noise is no longer welcome amongst the silent laptops in the Writers Room in Greenwich Village. According to the New York Daily News Ferrante returned to the room recently after an eight months absence and was presented with an ultimatum: give up the typewriter or abandon his cubicle (for which he pays $1400 a year). For Ferrante it wasn't a difficult decision: the Writers Room will see him no more. "I just wish there were some typists out there that would back me up," said Ferrante, "but I don't know of any." read more

Read This!
recommended reading from your neighborhood southern booksellers

SIBA Book Award Finalists

He was known as Eli the Good, but he still had to Shiver when he saw The Secret World of Walter Anderson. “Scat!” he shooed the strange-looking cat, “A Good Mule is Hard to Find and there’s Hard Work to be done In The Sanctuary of Outcasts.”  It was The Most They Ever Had, but hey, You Can’t Drink All Day if You Don’t Start in the Morning. And Zeitoun always had A Quiet Belief in Angels to Help him resist that Devil’s Punchbowl. He was The Last Child to carry that Dead Weight down to the South of Broad, because The Lee Brothers might be Simple, Fresh Southern, but the Southern Farmer’s Market only made him dream more often of My New Orleans.

SIBA Book Award Finalists: The Best Books of the Year, as chosen by the people who would know. . . southern indie booksellers

Children’s & Young Adults

Eli the Good by Silas House (Candlewick)
Scat by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf)
Secret World of Walter Anderson by Hester Bass (Candlewick)
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater (Scholastic)

Nonfiction

A Good Mule is Hard to Find by Kirk Neely (Hub City Writers Project)
Hard Work by Roy Williams (Algonquin)
In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White (Morrow)
Most They Ever Had by Rick Bragg (Macadam/Cage)
You Can't Drink All Day if You Don't Start in the Morning by Celia Rivenbark (St. Martins)
Zeitoun by David Eggers (McSweenys)

Fiction

A Quiet Belief in Angels by R.J. Ellory (Overlook)
Dead Weight by Batt Humphreys (Joggling Board Press)
Devil's Punchbowl by Greg  Iles (Scribner)
The Help by Katheryn Stockett (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam)
The Last Child by John Hart (Minotaur)
South of Broad by Pat Conroy (Nan Talese)

Cooking

The Lee Brothers Simple Fresh Southern by Ted and Matt Lee (Clarkson Potter)
Southern Farmer's Market Cookbook by Holly Herrick (Gibbs Smith)
My New Orleans: The Cookbook by John Besh (Andrews McMeel)

& Winter/Spring 2010 Okra Picks

Popeye might swear by his spinach, but down south we’re all about the Okra. These are the books from this year those same booksellers want you to watch out for:

Fiction

Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives by Brad Watson
W.W. Norton, March 2010
9780393057119 $23.95

An Unfinished Score by Elise Blackwell
Unbridled Books, April 2010
9781936071661, $24.95

Burning Bright: Stories by Ron Rash
Ecco, March 2010
9780061804113 $22.99

Fireworks Over Toccoa by Jeffrey Stepakoff
St. Martin’s Press, April 2010
9780312581589, $22.99

Hold Up the Sky by Patricia Sprinkle
New American Library,  March 2010
9780451229144, $15.00

How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly by Connie May Fowler
Grand Central Publishing,  April 2010
9780446540681, $23.99

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, January 2010
9780670021390, $25.95

This is Just Exactly Like You by Drew Perry
Viking,  April 2010
9780670021543, $25.95

Nonfiction

Confessions of a Rebel Debutante by Anna Fields
Harpercollins, April 2010
9780399156311, $24.95

Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming by Rheta Grimsley Johnson
New South Books, April 2010
9781588382504, $24.95

Gullah Cuisine: By Land and Sea by Charlotte Jenkins and William Baldwin
Evening Post Publishing Company with Joggling Board Press,  March 2010
9780981873596, $36.95

I Love You, Now Hush by Melinda Rainey Thompson and Morgan Murphy
John F. Blair, February 2010
9780895873781, $16.95

Lincoln on Trial by Burrus M. Carnahan
University of Kentucky Press, February 2010
9780813125695, $30.00

Lady Banks’ Bookshelf